Retail marketers are still failing to leverage the potential customer data available to them, according to a new study which claims with more than 80% fail to ask potential customers for simple yet invaluable insight.
Emailvision reviewed the websites and sign-up processes of the top 100 UK e-retailers, as defined by IMRG, to develop its first Retail Email Benchmark Study.
The report claims retailers are missing a trick by not gathering relevant information from their online customers such as gender, address or date of birth and using the data they have to create more meaningful conversations with their prospects and customers.
Although half ask for first name and surname (58% and 51% respectively), 82% fail to ask for gender, 86% don’t ask for an address and 81% don’t ask for a date of birth – all straightforward information fields against which data can be simply split to provide better targeted email campaigns for customers.
In addition, although 95% of companies do have an email programme in place, 5% cent of UK retailers are missing out entirely on a key revenue generator.
“Marketers need to be increasingly effective in what is an ever-challenging climate,” said Henry Smith, director of product marketing at Emailvision. “Retailers are seeing increased inbox competition with a multitude of offers and promotions falling into consumers’ inboxes every day. In order to better stand out from the crowd marketers need to unlock the potential of their data to build better customer relationships, based on trust and move from broadcast to dialogue marketing. Market as if you only have one customer.”
Although not one company put through Emailvision’s Retail Email Benchmark Study demonstrated best practice in all elements of the sign-up M&S, New Look, Debenhams and Very outperformed their competitors, demonstrating the best online sign up processes to maximise their customer intelligence potential.
